Slovenia’s bathing waters among best in EU

Ljubljana – Slovenia is among the eleven EU member states where all bathing water sites, on the coast and inland, are suitable for bathing, a report on European bathing water quality for 2020 shows. The group also features Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Croatia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania and Slovakia.

Europe had almost 22,280 bathing sites last year. In 2014-2020, the share of “excellent” bathing sites stood at 85-87% for coastal sites and at 77-81% for inland waters.

Slovenia’s Environment Agency (ARSO) said as it presented the data that water quality is always a bit better on the coast due to the sea’s greater capacity to self-clean.

ARSO said Slovenia was also one of ten EU member states which provided a sufficient number of water measurements during the bathing season.

Slovenia’s bathing waters on the coast had been above EU average for years, because they were all of excellent quality until two years ago.

Following a pollution in 2019, one site, Žusterna, is now rated “satisfactory”, lowering the excellence status to 95.2% for 2019 and 2020, ARSO said.

The share of excellent inland bathing sites in Slovenia in 2020 was at 76.9%, on a par with EU levels.

There were meanwhile 296 sites with poor bathing water in Europe in 2020, meaning bathing is not allowed. This is 1.3% of all sites.

The bulk were in Italy (93), followed by France (78), while Italy also led the way in terms of the number of sites where bathing was permanently banned over five years.

ARSO’s report for 2020 shows that 85% or 40 of a total of 47 bathing sites in Slovenia were excellent, 8.5% good, 6.4% satisfactory and none poor.

First test results from this year indicate that bathing waters will also be very good this season.

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